To be honest I didn't even get as far as signing up for deciding against it.

I initially used the web form to indicate I wanted a call-back during weekday mornings. So, Saturday night at 5pm I get a call (overseas call centre). Can't say I was impressed with that. The guy indicated that there would be a call back yesterday, didn't happen. I rang the 0508 number this morning and got the overseas call centre again. Heaps of background noise (sounded like a riot...), made it very hard to understand the poor guy on the phone, but then he was hardly helpful with the questions I had anyway. I said thanks and hung up.

Is there no decent call centre option, or even an NZ representative to call?

My experience with them could be classified as one of the worst. I signed up with TC on one Big Boys Toys occasion a few years ago, and nothing happened for 12 months, no email, no calls from them nada. Then the next BBT event came and I gave them another chance because I really want to try what they're offering (which was better than the other providers at the time), so I told the guy about what happened the year before. And he apologized and said it won't happen again. So I filled up everything, and waited and waited, rang them a few times only to be passed on from one person to another without actually answering my questions as to what is happening. Then I've never heard from them again. After 7 months, without warning or any contact they (TC) cut my internet and phone line off. So I called Telecom (my provider that time), and asked why, Telecom told me I'm with Telstra now. Now Telecom asked me to pay the termination fee because I just moved to them a month before. So I rang TC and told them I wasn't happy with what they did and demand they put me back to Telecom ASAP. A few days later I was back with Telecom and Telecom reversed the termination fee (good on them). And TC sent me a bill for the modem which I got from them 2 days after they disconnected me from Telecom. So we had a heated conversation regarding the charges, I told them I'll give them back their unopened modem and they refused and threatened me with debt collector's knocking on my door in the next few days. So they got me there, I said ok I'll pay, but I also wrote a letter to their boss, who in turn agreed to refund my payment, and to this day I did not bother getting that money back.

When we moved to South Island a TC guy came knocking on my office offering me good business deals, I smiled at him and I politely said "no thanks". Reading this kind of thread made me think I'm not alone. I thought I was singled out. Good luck with your dealings with them.

He needs another rule: Don't let hypocrisy get in the way of grandstanding.

Sarcasm aside, in reality if you want cable you have to use Telstraclear and cable has better upload then ADSL2+.

No doubt Don would be in favour of separation of Telstraclear into Retail and Network businesses and regulation of the cable network and forcing them to wholesale services to other ISP's at the price Telstraclear "Retail" pays.

From rule 8 - " if you can avoid it"

As for separation of TelstraClear, seems prudent. In Australia all new non-wireless layer 1 providers have to provide a layer 2 service wholesale.

Think of the benefits... great network with local support, and a way to bypass that proxy everyone hates so much, and you could use your choice of dns servers!